Disclosed herein are various methods, compositions, and devices utilizing microRNA, such as microRNA-based markers, to detect, predict, treat, or monitor various physiological or pathological conditions.
The ideal diagnostic marker has to fulfill certain key requirements including being specific, sensitive, robust, and non-invasive. Current disease diagnoses are primarily based on two different but complementary approaches—physical imaging and biomolecular profiling. Both approaches currently suffer from a lack of specificity and early detection capability. Tissue-specific blood biomarkers can increase the specificity to selected organs. However, the levels of these tissue-specific biomarkers are usually low in blood. In addition, the difficulty of developing suitable capture agents for proteins makes the identification and development of new molecular diagnostic markers difficult.
It would be desirable to provide new methods, compositions, and devices for diagnosing physiological and pathological conditions.